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10c. percent of Boston homeowners spend over a third of their income on housing, while the average rent is $1,857 per month. By contrast, Correa, who owns a three-bedroom home in the land trust, makes $940 in mortgage payments every month. Many struggling renters can only fantasize about the stability of Correa's situation. The policies that once made it feasible to live without fear of a rent spike are suffering a slow yet inevitable death with the number of rent-controlled or public units dwindling nationwide. More market-friendly affordable housing subsidy programs such as Section 8 and low-income housing tax credits remain politically palatable, but their affordability restrictions don't come with the same guarantee of forever. Building owners can opt out of the Section 8 program, while tax credits expire after 30 years. In both cases, private partners usually decide to continue providing affordable housing, but the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development finds they are substantially less likely to do so in neighborhoods where they can make more from renting or selling market-rate housing. Permanently affordable pockets like the units guaranteed by Dudley Neighbors are urban unicorns so rare that outside of public policy circles, they remain virtually unknown decades after their introduction to U.S. cities. T �u,��Uz;y� �. :,. , A�eignt�or� r��x �� <<:�,.�:: --� "It is one of the few models out there that creates affordable homeownership opportunities that serve family after family after family," says Emily Thaden, research and policy manager for the National Community Land Trust Network. "Federal funding sources for affordable housing are significantly diminishing and very little funding is out there for the creation of affordable homeownership opportunities. With that shrinking pie of federal funding it's crucial that we are efficiently utilizing public funds. The CLT model takes a onetime public investment and ensures it will be preserved so low-income families can continue to reside in that property." A Bulwark Against Gentrification There are numerous variations on the community land trust model, but in the basic framework a nonprofit obtains land, removes it from the market and allows it to be used based on the needs of the neighborhood residents. Typically, the organizations are led by a mix of community members, residents of the land trust, and sometimes, political representatives. Creating a nonprofit is the easy part. Land acquisition is where it gets tricky. In most cases, trusts must rely on massive subsidies or, like DSNI, being in a neighborhood before anyone else wants to be. In Dudley Square, the trust was able to convince the city to sell them 15 acres of blighted land for less than $500 because, well, no one else knew what to do with it. Once land is secured, the unique aspect of the model comes into play: The trust begins to sell or rent houses with permanent affordability established through 99-year leases. In addition to guaranteeing that the property will remain affordable in perpetuity, the 99-year ground lease allows the trust to intervene if there is a mortgage default or deferred maintenance. Nested in these long- term leases are other provisions to ensure permanent affordability, often including a preemptive purchase option that gives the land trust first dibs on the house if it goes up for sale. In that scenario, the home's price is determined by an affordability formula set below the market rate. Homeowners are allowed to recoup a set